"I saw a black disc progressively cover the sun. It's magnificent," said Clarence Diledou, who lives of the Gabon port town of Port-Gentil.

"But unfortunately the bad weather spoiled the party a bit," he said of the rain and overcast skies.

Like many in the town, he used special glasses distributed by authorities to watch the rare event.

Those who did not have any came up with imaginative solutions, among them Pauline Koumba, who put a bowl of water in her courtyard and watched the reflected eclipse.

"I saw the brief passage of the eclipse in my bowl. But it was over quickly and the black clouds spoiled the effect," she said.

Experts say a safe way to view an eclipse is by making a pinhole camera - piercing a tiny hole in a piece of paper then turning your back to the Sun and using the pierced page to project the image of the Sun on another sheet of paper.

Its path, which was nearly 60 kilometres wide, also swept through Uganda , Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

A partial eclipse was also visible from North and South America, southern Europe and the Middle East.